INSIGHT-Farage's Reform sets sights on Scotland and Wales in battle for Britain

PETERHEAD, Scotland, May 5 (Reuters) - James Buchan, a former fisherman in the Scottish port of Peterhead, has swallowed his hostility towards Nigel Farage.

The 38-year-old's ​longstanding distrust of the ⁠populist Reform UK leader and Brexit campaigner has been eclipsed by his fears for the local economy, which he said had ​been hollowed out by decades of ruinous British government policy.

This week, he plans to vote for Reform for the first time, seeing the party's pledges to maximise oil and gas production in the North Sea and restrict the access of European fishing boats as the best chance of reviving the town's fortunes.

"Some of the areas around here are starting to look like slums," ​Buchan ‌told Reuters as he sat having his hair trimmed on the high street, rising to point out boarded shops. "We need to find a way to get money circulating back through our economy."

Voters like Buchan are set to drive a surge of support for Reform this week in elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, as well as local councils across England.

Reform ⁠is riding high in national polls with a strong lead over governing Labour and the opposition Conservatives before a general election due by 2029. The party, whose ⁠post-Brexit rise has been largely driven by English support, is now making inroads in Scotland and Wales, reflecting a rejection ​of the UK's traditional two-party system.

In Thursday's vote, Reform is likely to become the official opposition in Scotland and Wales to local parties, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru, polls indicate. Its share of the vote is forecast to jump to about 20% in Scotland - from 0.2% in the last vote in 2021 - and almost 30% in Wales from about 1%.

Labour is expected to haemorrhage votes with the Conservatives reduced to a handful of seats.

The two nations, which have historically leaned left, have become fertile ground for Reform's populist message: rip up decades-old political systems, evict "liberal establishment elites" and crack down on immigration to better focus on local issues.

The ​high street of Bargoed, a town in ‌the Welsh valleys, is also peppered with boarded-up shops. The community, blighted by the closure of a coal mine in the 1970s, is classed as suffering "deep-rooted deprivation", according to the Welsh government.

At the dishevelled local pub, supporters of the insurgent party are vocal, in private if not public. "This is a very strong Reform pub," said former stage builder Wayne Hunt, 60, who said he himself preferred Plaid because it was more Welsh.

Conrad Ritchie, who is aiming for a seat in Scotland's parliament Holyrood as Reform's candidate for Banffshire and Buchan in the north, said the regional elections were a key element of his party's quest for national government.

"This is another building block," he added. "And I think, you know, come the general election, which won't be too far away ... then I reckon that we have a serious chance of becoming the next ruling party."

Labour spokespeople for Scotland and Wales said that Reform would divide communities and drag politics "into the gutter", adding ​that Labour was focused on bringing about fair change. The Conservatives did not respond to a request for comment.

Reform's critics say the fledgling party, founded as the Brexit Party in 2018 before being rebranded in 2021, is wholly unprepared for governing regionally, let alone nationally.

Indeed, questions about readiness pervade the party itself; six Reform ‌sources who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter said that rather than running the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, the party might be better off coming a close second to get used to the way administrations and assemblies work, before the national election.

VETTING WOES: NAZI SALUTE, RACIST COMMENTS

Among Reform's most thorny, and scandal-ridden, problems has been its vetting of candidates. Following failures at the last general election in 2024, when more ‌than 100 candidates were removed, some over racist comments, the party has tightened its procedures, adding credit data agency Experian checks to those completed by its central office, Reform officials said.

Llyr Powell, Reform's candidate for the Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni so-called super constituency in southern Wales, told Reuters his vetting process included being grilled by Jeremy Kyle, a UK tabloid talkshow presenter, in mock media interviews.

Yet the problem still looms large.

Since March, when the party announced its slate of more than 160 candidates in Scotland and Wales, 15 of them have withdrawn following the resurfacing of racist or derogatory online material, disputes with the party, or ​administrative errors.

In one case in Wales, a candidate resigned after images emerged of him making a Nazi salute. In Scotland, another stepped down after publicly describing the country's first Muslim leader as "not British" and an "Islamist moron".

Powell admits there have been "bumps along the way" but says Reform includes people "with real life experience" rather than polished career politicians.

"You can't vet for something someone here hasn't ‌done yet, or if someone is not completely transparent with you in that process," he added.

Nonetheless, the charges of racism resonate with some in Scotland and Wales. The SNP and Plaid, which are both playing down any push for independence after the May 7 elections, accuse Reform of inflaming tensions around immigration. But they also see how Farage can aid their cause.

Delyth Jewell, deputy leader of Plaid, said she had lost count of voters in her Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni constituency saying they were voting for her party to keep Reform out.

"They have resented the vitriol, the nasty rhetoric that has been brought in by Reform to our streets, and they ⁠want to do anything they ⁠can to oppose that," she told Reuters. "So in lots of ways, I think the leader of Reform unifies so many people in being against his nasty vision for the future of the UK."

DISILLUSIONED VOTERS TURN ‌TO REFORM

Chris Hopkins, political research director at polling firm Savanta, said British politics was seeing a breakdown of traditional voting patterns - polarised between left and right - in the wake of the Brexit vote of 2016.

"To voters in Britain right now ... It is about the system doesn't work. Can anyone change it? And they are way more willing to roll the dice on an unknown."

Indeed, ​Ritchie and Powell say Reform is attracting former Labour and Conservative voters in Scotland and Wales, ​as well as people who haven't voted in years, with policies such as offering the nations cuts in income tax and pledging to sort out local issues such as building roads.

Unlike most of the other ‌candidates, Powell had a trial run when he lost a by-election in the southern Welsh town of Caerphilly in October for a seat in the UK parliament, though the 36% of the vote he won pointed to Reform's appeal.

Powell denied the party wanted to come second, although he said it was a struggle to ensure those disillusioned with 100 years of Labour government would turn out on the day.

"The best result, for Wales anyway, is a Reform government," said Powell. "We don't do this to just shout from the sidelines, that's what the others seem to like to do. If you played rugby at all, you want to be on that pitch and getting stuck in. Sitting on the bench is not something you want to do." (Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Kate Holton and Pravin Char)